A Cat And Clock Live In Roman Times
by sxcond
Summary: "IN ANONYMITY THERE IS IMPUNITY; IN IMPUNITY ONE IS ABOVE; IN BEING ABOVE THE PETTY LAWS, ONE HAS SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY. AS SOVEREIGN YOU ARE KING IN BEING KING YOU ARE FREE. IN BEING FREE YOU ARE GOD. THERE IS GODHOOD IN ANONYMITY. THERE IS AN ANONYMOUS KING." - Written for the QDLC Round One.
_A Cat And Clock Live In Roman Times_

* * *

" _Knowing the mouse might one day leave its hole and get the cheese... It fills you with determination."_

— _Undertale._

 _. . ._

 _01._

5 a.m.

The neon blue Figure 8 sign outside the indoor ice-skating rink buzzes to life.

02.

It's early in the morning—still dark—when Peter wakes under his plastic seat. He hasn't bathed in months, and his fur is encrusted with gray snow and frozen water. Not that anyone can tell from a glance. All the dirt camouflages his gray fur.

Peter shakes some snow from his snout and whiskers, and they fall softly like, well, snow. As is routine for him, he begins to sniff for food.

Soon, he finds a packet of contraband fries under a seat but hesitates to bring it back for breakfast. The red and yellow colours of the paper container seem like a warning. The creepy, curved 'm' icon especially. M for murder, maybe? But he's too lazy to find another less dangerous looking one and drags it back to the seat with his mouth anyway.

It's difficult to imagine, but Peter hasn't been nearly that lazy. He once possessed a healthy level of procrastination, reaching only the average—perhaps even required—quota of unattempted homework that any normal boy would. Once, he had self-preservation instincts. But he's become too comfortable, and his instincts have since been dulled by idle contentment and lack of ambition. This satisfied laziness often plagues people who have grown plump on the ideals of life: good food, good eye-candy, and godhood from anonymity.

Yes, Peter is satisfied with life. Surprisingly, making a home in an indoor ice-skating rink is quite alright; it's a paradise for a rat, which he can almost imagine himself as king of.

There's always an abundance of half-eaten fries, burgers and cold soft drinks abandoned on the ground like offerings of feasts for a modern god of avarice. The rink is the palace of his personal harem. There, men and women with sinuous legs skate and spin across the ice while his eyes rove over their bodies. All in all, Peter's paunch is well fed, his beady eyes equally so.

And as a nameless nonhuman, he is above human laws such as "NO EATING IN THE RINK." Godhood from anonymity— _what a wondrous concept!_

Peter nibbles on an opulent, golden french fry under the seat in the rink.

He is king.

The fearsome glow of the sun licks across the surface of the ice.

Currently, it's dawn and most of the usual skaters are still sound asleep. The rink is empty except for a lone dancer on the gleaming ice, practising and falling, which are nearly synonymous when one is as tragically bad as she is. She wobbles in the midst of a pirouette and drops on the ice.

"Ouch," she says childishly, and like a clock, her voice is mild, crisp and timeless.

Peter doesn't like her. Uncharitably, he thinks that she should leave, but his mother has indoctrinated him well, and an automatic, unpleasant guilt causes him to shift uneasily upon thinking so.

 _It's improper to belittle a girl who tries (as hard as I have),_ he remembers his mother once saying. Though the last part was muttered from under her bitter, bitter breath.

The girl is wearing a white tutu, and Peter thinks, absently—his mind was on other subjects such as her slender figure—that it looks startlingly similar to the snowy lily James had transfigured for Lily's thirteenth birthday.

"Psst, James—doesn't it look like—" Peter begins and falls silent.

His stomach roils like it's crashed into a mean jag of ice. His paws begin to shake, and he hears his heart palpitating. Distinctly uncomfortable, he watches the dancer fall again while his stomach sinks into another bout of self-loathing. But strangely enough, though his chest hurts, and everything hurts so much, his mind is numb.

An hour later the clock strikes eight. He still feels like choking. The anxiety coursing through his veins still hasn't stopped, but the dancer has. Her fluid lily-skirt, so contrary to the clumsy angles of her movements, shivers behind her as she leaves.

Then all is silent, except for the fierce sounds of the clock furiously ticking by and the low meowing of a distant cat. Peter cowers and his fur brushes the top the seat. They're sounds of his mortality.

Needless to say, Peter has always been afraid of clocks and cats.

He's scared witless of becoming like either, too. Whenever he notices a clock or a cat, he can't help but imagine that they must be miserable, lonely creatures. A clock always ticks alone, dutifully counting down the time even as others abhor it for the same reasons he does.

And a cat is often seen aloof, licking its coy paws and staring at what's unseen and, if seen, rarely said.

They walk such solitary roads, but Peter feels that being a cat would be inexplicably worse.

Still, Peter doesn't want to be either, which is why the loneliness of the vast, empty rink sends a shiver of unease up his tail.

For a moment, he's tempted to leave.

Then he remembers how much effort it would take to lug his packet of fries elsewhere.

03.

To Peter's relief, the rink gradually fills again as it always has.

The ebb and flow of people inside the rink is mesmerising. It must be the way they're suddenly here, laughing and spinning and falling and then—not, because they've left for a cup of hot espresso from the vending machine. The way they force him to live in the moment, to remember them— _quickly!_ —or they'll vanish, leaving nothing in the world except perhaps a sad footprint or a thrice-cursed baby.

James had gone just like that. Lily, too. Peter regrets having spent their last moments in terror of each other: he, of James finding out that he was the mole and—and _killing_ him, because James was hot headed like that. Meanwhile, James had been afraid of the mole—or rather, rat—in the Order. Of course, by extension that means James had been afraid of Peter—James, afraid of _him!_ Imagine _that_!—because Peter had been that mole.

Or maybe James had known, and had foolishly given him a second chance, but Peter prefers not to think of it that way. It's harder to forget the pain and guilt, and to remember that, really, James's death, Lily's death, Sirius's imprisonment, and Peter's forced betrayal and torture is the fault of IT.

He wants to scream and bite off his tail when he thinks of IT.

IT is a monster, the harbinger of death who has lead Voldemort to the house of IT's own kind, Gryffindor parents.

James would be alive if not for IT's prophecy.

IT, with its deathless green eyes, has sealed their fates.

Not Peter.

04.

Strangely enough, from the seat in the stands, the skaters seem subserviently tiny like house elves. Peter is uncertain why he's comparing them to _house elves_ exactly. It feels so right—but wrong.

It just holds negative connotations that James would have caught and disapproved of; somehow, it has the faintest pungence of Death Eater dogma.

Peter doesn't think he believes in the whole muggles-are-born-to-serve-wizards campaign, nor the Death Eater cause. It could be Lily and the other Marauders' influence, but the whole prejudice seems so…irrational.

As the ice-skaters sway across the rink at dizzying speeds, Peter wonders in blissful ignorance if he'll ever understand why the snobby Purebloods don't think that muggles are human, too; unknowing that because he is a sentient rat, a king, a small part of him is already beginning to think the same.

(Once you attain godhood or kingship, your very species has changed. You are inhuman. You are a monster. Thusly no longer will you identify with the alien, servile, little humans.)

05.

Most of the skaters have abandoned the rink for lunch. The rink is now spacious enough to fit an elephant, to the joy of the bumbling skaters left who will no longer need to apologize to someone with every step—or rather, fall—they take.

Peter peers into the pack of fries and finds only salt and crumbs. He takes a staggering step - he feels like pins and needles are prodding his paws - and scurries across the seating gallery, beneath a row of chairs. When he reaches the end of the row, he sneaks out the doorway next to it that leads to a carpark.

Behind him, the clock strikes twelve. Noon. The sun beats on at its zenith.

06.

The carpark is full of empty lots. Graffiti drips from the walls, most of them crudely spray-painted even-cruder words. Against the gray carpark walls and the stoic gloom of the London sky, the fluorescent graffiti stands out like a creature young, wild and alive.

But there's another ilk of graffiti on a different blank concrete wall, written in flat, Roman Times font. It reads:

"IN ANONYMITY THERE IS IMPUNITY;

IN IMPUNITY ONE IS ABOVE;

IN BEING ABOVE THE PETTY LAWS,

ONE HAS SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY.

AS SOVEREIGN YOU ARE KING

IN BEING KING YOU ARE FREE.

IN BEING FREE YOU ARE GOD.

THERE IS GODHOOD IN ANONYMITY.

THERE IS AN ANONYMOUS KING."

Peter squints, but he can't understand it very much. He never paid much attention during his mother's elocution classes, so the words are beyond his grasp. He turns away from the wall.

He sees a cat.

Cats eat rats.

Peter prepares to run.

But then the cat speaks, slow and mellifluous with the low drawl of a jazz singer. "Et tu, Brute?*"

"Et tu, Brute?" The cat repeats, its cold green eyes gleaming like icicles in the afternoon sunlight.

' _Harry,'_ he thinks, and the anxiety starts again.

All aloof, the cat licks its paws. The messy black fur that seems as dark as the night, ripples as the cat begins to pad towards him.

Peter is frozen under its gaze. He can hear his heart beating, faster and faster, in time with the ticks of a…clock?

Suddenly, Peter shrieks. The cat's head, thrice as large as his own body, looms above him like a lion.

But he can feel no breaths from the cat.

"I-Inf-feri?" Peter squeaks out.

"No," The black cat says acerbically and stalks past him.

"Agaaaainst the Capitol! I met a liooon*," sings a cuckoo clock dancing a leprechaun jig across the deserted parking lot. "Who glaaaared upon meee, and went surly by, with-out an-noying meeeeeee.*"

Julius Caesar. Peter shrieks again. "Li—Lily?" he cries. He faintly remembers her restlessly reading that line to IT while she and James were in hiding.

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" A cat's head springs out of the cuckoo clock and slams into his face. "Peace, count the clock!*"

"Peter, Peter." The cat sighs knowingly with cold green eyes.

(It stares at what's unseen and if seen, rarely said. )

"We know what you did. We can see your bloody hands. You killed my father, you killed my mother. And then, you became a god."

"Run, run, Peter-God.

We grant you mercy and a cuckoo clock

But beware the silver hands;

For once they reach the midnight hour

A deity shall meet his end."

07.

Peter wakes up on a mop of red hair and blinks his eyes blearily. There was an odd dream about… cuckoo clocks… and cats with green eyes?

' _What a crazy dream,'_ Peter thinks drowsily, wondering if he really is going cuckoo, living as the Weasleys' pet rat.

Below him, Ron continues speaking as he ladles more soup into his bowl.

"Children, the treacle tart is nearly done!" Mrs Weasley calls from the kitchens.

"...And you wouldn't guess what Scabbers did while sleeping! He went all still and started squeaking—blimey mate, I thought he was going to die on me!" Ronald Weasley says excitedly below him, though Peter doesn't see the thrill in recounting his almost-death.

"His squeaks sounded bloody weird, too—kinda like he was telling a prophecy or something, but that's impossible, ain't it?"

Ron and his conversation partner share a laugh.

Rats, telling prophecies? Ridiculous! Peter squeaks a sad little laugh too. Though the Pettigrew lineage did have several seers, Peter has never shown any ability for it, to the disappointment of his relatives.

"So—you haven't told me, Harry—did the Dursleys do anything,"—Ron hesitates—"funny to you?"

Peter freezes. Harry—Harry James Potter. IT is in his home—in the Weasleys' home. He has heard of IT, of course, since a year ago on the train when he'd been unceremoniously awakened by Ronald for some yellow-buttercup spell. He had avoided IT whenever he could after that, because his instincts had told him so. There are some things people aren't meant to know.

(But gods are.)

(The lion inside him roars.) It seems almost like fate for IT to have been shoved into his home, into his face after a year of tireless aversion.

Peter makes a choice.

(The lion inside him roars.)

He lifts his head.

And he looks into warm—so brilliant and soft—green eyes.

Suddenly, he knows who the real monster is. It isn't Harry. IT isn't the clock, or the cat.

(Above him, the Weasley cuckoo clock chimes and the front door opens.

Mr Weasley is home.

Harry, with his deathly green eyes, has sealed Peter's fate.)

08.

It is himself.

.

.

.

 _fin._

 _..._

* * *

 _A/N:_

 _*Asterisked lines are all quotes from Julius Caesar._

 _Round: One._

 _Team: Falmouth Falcons_  
 _CHASER 1: Write about your chosen Death Eater being at home._

 _Chosen Death Eater: Peter Pettigrew_

 _Prompts (underlined): Figure 8, Espresso, Unpleasant._

 _(By the way, did anyone notice that there are eight partitions, one for each of Voldemort's souls? I didn't too! Oooh and all the puns! I love the Roman Times and the cuckoo one. Sorry not sorry if they're bad. Puns are as bae as salmon and cheese. )_


End file.
